We all memorize random bits of information about our
favorite science fiction stories, just from long exposure to them. But we're
aware, on some level, that it's all useless information. Except that some trivia is
anything but trivial. Here are 10 pieces of science fiction trivia that could
be really helpful in real life.

10) The solution to
the Death Zone maze in Doctor Who, "The Five Doctors"

This is how I remember the first eight digits of Pi —
because the First Doctor intones them right before he starts tossing coins out
onto the deadly chess board that can only be crossed if you step on the
corresponding numbers. For the ninth digit and beyond, though, you'll have to
use other means.

Everybody is fond of quoting this passage from Frank
Herbert's Dune — but it's actually a
useful bit of psychology that can help you to overcome fear.

7) East and West in
Larry Niven's N-Space

In Larry Niven's story "The Kiteman," we learn
that the most important maxim in the Smoke Ring is: "East takes you Out,
Out takes you West, West takes you In, In takes you East. North and South bring
you back." But what does this mean? It makes more
sense once you realize that "East" means co-orbital and "West"
means anti-orbital, and "in" and "out" are in relation to
the central neutron star.

6) One bit of Star
Trek technobabble that could help you learn

On Star Trek: The Next
Generation, they're always going on about the Heisenberg
compensators, a component of the transporter that gives them a lot of
trouble. But this can actually help teach you about Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle, the notion that you can't know a particle's location and
momentum — which those compensators presumably compensate for, somehow.

5) The reason for the
title of Bradbury's most famous book

Fahrenheit 451 refers to the temperature at which paper
bursts into flame — and now you know what that temperature is, in case you
ever need to burn some papers in your oven.

4) The monsters in
Forbidden Planet

Quote Forbidden Planet
often enough, and you'll learn something about our psychology that's as
valuable as "fear is the mind-killer." The monsters are described as
coming from the id, the primitive part of the brain, which introduces you to
the idea that we all have primitive, aggressive impulses in our psyche that come
from a primal place and can't be gotten rid of.

3) "Big Brother
is watching"

Actually, George Orwell's 1984 is full of quotable phrases which people spout off at the
least provocation — and they give us a way to talk about the rise of the
surveillance state, and the fact that Big Brother really is watching us now. Not to mention how useful "newspeak" is in our era of media double-talk.

2) Captain Kirk's
deadly recipe

Anyone who has obsessed over the Star Trek episode "Arena" and can quote it from memory
also knows the ingredients of gunpowder. In particular, you might not have
realized potassium nitrate was an ingredient in the stuff unless you saw Kirk
dealing with it.

1) Han Solo's most
famous boast

Han Solo brags that the Millennium Falcon did the Kessel Run
in under 12 parsecs — prompting decades of fans to point out that parsecs are
a measure of distance, not time. Which means now you know what a
"parsec" is. (It's equal to about 30 trillion kilometers, or 3.25
light years.) And yes, there is an explanation for this in one of the novels —
he was talking about shortening the distance of the trip by steering
dangerously close to black holes, or something.